


And All the King's Men

by Gelsey



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 13:36:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1120463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gelsey/pseuds/Gelsey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was only ever one person who gave Poppy poppies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And All the King's Men

The red poppy rested in a rinsed-out ink pot on Poppy Pomfrey’s desk. She nearly missed seeing it, she was so tired after cleaning up everyone after the now-called Final Battle. But that slash of color, so much brighter and cheerier than the blood she’d been dealing with, grabbed her gaze before she made it into her rooms.

She approached it slowly, as if it were rigged to explode. After the night she’d had, there was the possibility it might. Nothing happened, however, and her fingertips touched the silky soft petals gently. It beamed at her cheerfully from its simple, impromptu vase.

Only one person ever left her poppies on her desk, and she’d been told just hours before that he was dead. She’d seen his body herself. Yet…

Yet wasn’t there a blur of time she couldn’t remember, just after Hermione Granger had approached her about Severus’ death in the Shrieking Shack? Without this poppy, the Healer would have put it down to simple fatigue and over-wrought emotions over recent events.

But the poppy was here, bright evidence in a jar. 

There was no note, no signature, no other giveaway. But only Severus Snape had ever left her a poppy, as a thank you every time she’d patched him up since his first year of school.

Poppy plucked the flower carefully from the vase, holding as she would a child in her hand. Alive. Safe. She had saved him? She must have.

“Bless you, boy,” she whispered, knowing he couldn’t hear her but unable to help herself. It was always what she said to him, every time she’d put him back together again.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for dyno drabble's LDWS a long time ago.


End file.
